When the furnaces at Hopewell Furnace were in operation, hundreds of charcoal hearths would turn 5,000 to 6,000 cords of wood per year into charcoal for use in the furnace. The charcoal was dumped into an area just above this charcoal house and left to cool. Once the charcoal had cooled, it was shoveled down through windows at the top of the charcoal house and left here for storage until needed. Once needed, teams of men would load wagons and wheelbarrows and haul the charcoal across the way to the bridge house where it was dumped down a hole in the floor that led to the furnace area below.
From my Monday, 9-7-2009 trip to Hopewell National Historic Site.
For more information on visiting Hopewell Furnace, please visit their web site
This was shot as nine bracketed RAW frames then combined into an HDR and tone mapped in Photomatix Pro. Then I created a duplicate layer and used the B & W filter in OnOne Software’s Photo Tools to convert the layer to B & W and finally used the brush out tool in Photo Tools to brush away the B & W on the waghon wheel to reveal the weathered colors in the layer underneath.
